New legislation around sustainability and climate disclosures requires new strategies for good corporate governance, from the chief executive officer down.
Meeting shareholder interests is more important than ever, and having the right corporate governance structure is crucial.
The first instinct for corporate officers to create successful corporate governance is to create more policies around risk management and a company’s financial reporting.
This is the opposite of what needs to happen, though, and leads to bad corporate governance.
Companies, especially public companies, need to create better internal governance by using the right technology.
This is where Trakref comes in.
We ensure that your governance will align shareholder interests and represent shareholders’ concerns about sustainability.
You’ll be able to meet government requirements all while ensuring effective corporate governance and corporate strategy.
Trust us to help your company create the business integrity to effectively track refrigerants and meet goals for your company’s management of sustainability.
The Goal of Corporate Governance
The goal of effective corporate governance is to create high quality reliable data. Trakref has the mechanisms in place through a rules engine to guide the workforce and alert about significant issues.
With Trakref, you’re able to have the right data in place that you can then use for ESG reports and government reporting. Trakref ensures data integrity is part of everyone’s work results without disrupting supply chains. Its formalized framework is built on industry best practices from two decades of experience and provides a structure for your teams to ensure work supports ESG objectives and SDGs.
Moving from Aspirations to Operations
Refrigerants are complex. They move through your system in transactions small and large, they’re hard to track on invoices, and providing auditable data on them is also something new to most companies – historically, tracking them was not required unless they were impacting larger systems.
This means that having corporate governance that properly tracks them requires moving beyond paper. Invoices do not properly account for refrigerants and they’re unable to be audited in the way that the SEC, the state of California, and ESMA are now requiring. Trakref will get you there.
Trakref will allow you to:
Avoid phantom emissions
Phantom emissions are emissions that didn’t really happen, but show up in your reporting anyways. They undermine your data’s integrity and sabotage audits.
Trakref ensures that you avoid phantom emissions and that you have accurate, auditable data.
Trakref Enables Corporate Governance
Our solution ensures that you’re breaking down siloes and that the right information is being shared across your organization – and eventually, to external stakeholders.
Features that will help with corporate governance include:
Everyone can access the data they need
Whether you need to report to California, the SEC, or ESMA, everyone in your organization will have the information that they need.
Features include:
Trakref Success Stories
Large multi-national company with European ownership
This company had a lot of policies and procedures, but did not have a governance goal and a way to actually deploy their policies.
Trakref helped them align their practices by using business processes baked into the software.
In one quarter, Trakref deployed their need for governance and helped them deliver on reporting goals.
Large grocery chain
This company had an aggressive responsibility to meet EPA and shareholder needs for data. They relied on Trakref to integrate with their CMMS system.
Using Trakref, they harvested data from the CMMS system.
This provided senior leadership with the tools and data they needed to report to both regulators and shareholders through non-financial disclosure ESG reporting.
Large multi-national online retailer
This company had decentralized data. Using Trakref, they were able to create immediate harmonization for data collection and were able to report on sustainability and Scope 1 ESG emissions.
Through Trakref, they were able to use The Climate Registry General Reporting Protocol process to align data and create a carbon balance sheet that was auditable.
In the US – SEC Rulemaking and California’s SB 260
In the US, more focus is being put on business ethics and companies’ financial health regarding sustainability. The SEC passed rulemaking to make certain financial climate disclosure required if you’re a public company.
In California, corporate behavior and financial statements are also being scrutinized. SB 260, passed by California’s senate, will require companies making $1 billion in revenue to include Scope 1, 2, and 3 emissions in disclosure practices.
In the EU – new reporting requirements under ESMA
A company’s strategy around sustainability is not just something affecting US governments and agencies looking for economic co-operation.International companies also need to look at government regulators in the EU, including ESMA.
Major shareholders in the EU are also interested in a company’s objectives from a sustainability point of view. Good governance, ethical behavior, and ownership structures are critical to satisfy multiple shareholders making their own independent judgment on a company’s emissions.
Companies registered with ESMA must report on:
Strategy Governance and Resiliency
Individual companies must show how their governance standards work toward being resilient in the face of climate change.
Double materiality
Be sure you can measure the impacts your company creates on the climate in terms of both carbon and financial health.
Topic selection process
As you are monitoring performance, know exactly what topics related to environmental obligations you are working toward.
Targets and goals
As you work toward rectifying governance issues, have concrete targets and goals related to sustainability.
There are also three reporting requirements in the EU which are all accounted for in Trakref:
→ Non-Financial Reporting Directive
→ EU Sustainability Reporting Directive
→ EU Taxonomy Law
Trakref applies basic accounting standards to material transactions to deliver the data that companies need to meet these obligations. Trakref also has push-button access to the IPCC greenhouse gas reporting protocol, another standard that companies operating in the EU must pay attention to.
Sustainability Reporting Requirements Are Increasing
Both in the US and the EU, there is more of a need for accountability for sustainability and performance measurement. Annual budgets include it, a company’s board asks for it, and many an investment decision is based off of it.
As you move forward, you need to make sure you have the right corporate governance in place to oversee all sustainability activities. Trakref is a scalable solution that provides you with auditable data tided to transactions that can be verified through legacy information collected while service work is being performed. We translate your CMMS data into investor-grade data, providing a framework for the patchwork of reporting responsibilities.
Moving Toward Better Corporate Governance
As you’re addressing your corporate governance strategies to manage sustainability, it may be tempting to create many new policies. However, in our experience, we know this doesn’t work – policies won’t be followed through without proper corporate governance and understanding of sustainability goals throughout a company.
Instead of being policies-first, companies must be governance-first to increase ESG maturity. Everyone in the company needs to understand their responsibilities and how to effectively work together to meet goals.
Trakref helps with this. With unlimited user access for your whole company, up-to-date reports, and a top-line approach to refrigerants, we ensure that you have the technological tools needed to oversee corporate governance.
What You Need to Do
The world of sustainability is quickly changing, and along with it, corporate governance.
If you’re sitting in a CEO or CFO position, you can no longer be idle when it comes to reconciling conflicts around and reporting on sustainability.
Your goal for corporate governance should be to put a plan in place that includes:
Establishing Key Roles and Metrics
Decide who is responsible for what roles in sustainability. Also, figure out what metrics you will be reporting on.
Creating Operational Definitions and Accountability
If you don't have definitions, you don't know what you're measuring. Make sure you're staying accountable through concrete definitions.
Ensuring the Integrity and Quality of Your Data
Greenwashing is out, and auditable data is in. The data you're using will need to be audited by a third party.
Trakref is the answer
Trakref ensures that you have the right metrics with clear definitions. Since you're tracking data directly from your units, your data will be auditable.
Get in touch with us today
Trakref helps align your goals and tracking so that you have the right corporate governance in place to meet new sustainability standards.
If you’re looking to make sustainability a core part of your organization and meet changing rules and legislation, we’re here to help.